


Stuck

by nillial



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: M/M, Trapped In Elevator, a rival origin story kinda?, anyways enjoy, dang! i hate keith and his gorgeous face!!!!!, just why lance thinks he n keith are rivals and thinks that keith is aware of that, lance is pining but he doesnt know hes pining, lance n keith get stuck in an elevator its a good time, most of this is set in their first year at the garrison btw, so hes just like
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-24
Updated: 2017-05-24
Packaged: 2018-11-04 14:50:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10993155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nillial/pseuds/nillial
Summary: Lance just wanted to get to class on time.Which is why he took advantage of his only option-- the third floor elevator, which broke down at least once every month.  Still, if it meant not being late to Iverson's, he was willing to take the risk.Unfortunately, at the last second, Keith slips into the elevator, and, of course, it breaks down.Just his luck.





	Stuck

Lance was  _ not _ going to be late to another piloting class with Iverson.

He knew what would happen if he was— it would mean another dent in his grade that he couldn't afford. In the past week alone, he had racked up a good ten points off his grade solely from his lack of punctuality. Combined with all of the simulations he failed, the tests he bombed, and the homework he never got around to doing nor turning in, he would surely land himself with an F, and, additionally, a ticket to his expulsion. He typically made the honor roll at his old school, but the Garrison was prestigious, to say the least. Lance considered it to be a miracle that he was accepted. He wasn't going to fail and get kicked out of one of the best piloting schools in the country because of being late to fucking Iverson’s class. 

Books and papers threatening to fall, backpack straps uneven, he made his way to the third floor elevator. 

The third floor elevator had a reputation. Because it was constructed when The Garrison was tinier and less well-revered, it only went up to the third floor instead of all ten. No improvements had been made upon it since it was first installed. Every time you stepped inside, it made a horrible creaking noise that made you afraid for your life. When you punched in a floor number, it produced an ear-piercing screech during the entire trip, and you could hear the wire that your life depended upon threatening to snap above you, which would cause you to plummet to the basement and, consequently, your untimely death. It broke down between floors at least once every month. Sometimes new arrivals would stop and watch people try to get everyone out, but eventually they got tired. He had no idea why they didn't just board off the elevator before it killed someone and scrap the parts for the engineers to work with. 

Although the third floor elevator went much slower than any other in the building, they were quicker than stairs. So, taking a deep breath, Lance strolled inside the elevator and hoped for the best. 

He felt it creak under his weight as soon as he stepped inside. Not willing to waste any time, he pressed the first floor button. 

That is, until he heard someone shout,  _ “Wait a second!” _

He caught a glimpse of a mullet rounding the corner, textbook tucked in his arm, red jacket cropped just above his waist.

_ Keith _ .

His hand moved toward the button panel. Hoping he didn’t see, Lance punched in the same command twenty times over.  _ Close door, close door, close door, close door, close door. _

Still, the third floor elevator lived up to its reputation of being rickety and slow, and no matter how many times he pushed that button, it wasn’t going to close in time. Yet, he had hope.

The door began to shut. Lance became unsure whether or not Keith would make it. 

_ Close door, close door, close door, close door, close door… _

Keith stuck his foot in between the doors in the nick of time. They separated, allowing him to step inside without being crushed or his foot being torn off. He paid no mind to the creaking sound that accompanied his arrival. Instead, he just leaned against the elevator wall, gripped the rail, and said, “Floor one, asshole.”

Lance stared in astonishment for a moment.

Keith returned his look with a glare. “What? I saw you trying to take off without me. Hurry up and press the button again— I’m gonna be late.”

With an annoyed grunt, Lance complied, bracing himself for the screeching noise that was to greet him as soon as the elevator started moving. 

Sure enough, the sound equivalent of a pterodactyl and a giant cat having a shrieking contest emitted from the elevator cables that their lives depended on. Not very comforting, to say the least.

He watched as the number above him transition from floor three into floor two, and, then, just as it was about to settle, it shrieked to a halt. 

_ What the fuck? _

Realization dawned on him.

_ No. Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no. _

He was  _ not _ stuck in an elevator with Keith Kogane.   
They shared a glance.

“Are we stuck?” Keith asked.

“Hmm. I don’t know,” he replied, making sure the sarcasm in his tone was clear. “Take a guess.”

The other rolled his eyes and reached for the call button on the panel. The lights in the car turned red, alarming the both of them. A bored voice drawled out of the speaker.

“Is help needed in Elevator One?” they asked.

“Yeah,” he replied. “The car is stuck.”

Lance thought he heard the voice on the speaker mumble something to the extent of  _ “Jesus, fuck, not again.” _

“Can you identify yourself and any other passengers?” they continued.   


“Uh, sure, I guess. Keith Kogane and… um…” He spared a look towards Lance, who gave an incredulous huff.

“Really? You and I share, like, two classes together.”   


Keith offered a shy shrug.

He sighed. “Lance McClain.”

“And Lance McClain,” Keith finished. 

“We’ll notify a crew to fix the situation and your instructors to let them know you’ll be late,” the voice informed. “Please remain calm. You will be released shortly.”

The speaker switched off with a click. 

Lance groaned and slid against the wall. 

“What are you doing?” Keith asked, gazing at him with something between confusion and a glare.

“What does it look like I’m doing?” he replied. “I’m moping.”   


He rolled his eyes. “Get off the floor.”

“Why?” he asked. “We’re going to be here for, maybe, another three hours. If anything, you should sit down with me.”

He contemplated for a moment, eyebrows furrowed, and, then, grudgingly complied, sliding down across from him.

A minute of silence of Keith uncomfortably trying to avoid his gaze passed between them.

“So…” Lance said.

“So?” Keith responded.

“So, we’re going to be here for a while. Might as well talk.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Talk?”

“Yeah, you know. Like, conversing.”

“I know what talking is.”

“I wasn't even sure you knew how.”

“Funny.”

“I know, I know, I have amazing wit.”

“Sure.”

“One word answers don't really contribute to a conversation.”

“Then don't try to have one.”

“We’re going to be here for hours, and we’ll have nothing to do—”

“Then don't do anything.”

Lance crossed his arms. “Keith, I’ll admit, I’m not that fond of you.”

“I figured as much.”

“Still, you’ve got to try and work with me here.”

“No thanks.”

He groaned. “Come  _ on. _ Alright! Fine. Truth is:  _ I _ can't be stuck here for hours on end doing nothing. You, on the other hand, probably can sit in the middle of a desert watching paint dry and be fine. Hell, you probably do that for fun. Just, like, do something for once. Tell me a story. Give me a topic. Suggest a game we can play. Something.”

Keith, who had previously been staring at the doors and trying to avoid eye contact, side-eyed him from his spot on the floor. “That actually happened once, you know.”

He furrowed his brow. “What?”

“The watching paint dry in the desert thing,” he said, shifting in his seat, gaze pointed towards the ground. “It happened.”

He let a grin spread over his face. “See? A story! We’re getting somewhere.”

“I mean,” Keith continued, “I didn't do it for fun, but…”

“So, why?”

“My dad and I live in this shack in the desert. I mean, now I live in one of the dorms, but that's besides the point.”

“Yeah, yeah, keep going.”

“My dad was, uh… starting to act a little… off. He thinks there's this thing in the desert. Something giving off some sort of ethereal energy. He told me it has something to do with my mom. Of course, I don't really believe that too much, but I go along with it for his sake. Anyways, he gives me this little wooden board that he had just painted red, and he tells me to go to a certain place in the desert, watch it dry, and see what happens. So I do what he says, but after a while, I just ended up walking around and searching little caves carved in the rock, observing ants, trying to break open a cactus, that sort of stuff. After it finally dries, I pick up the plank and go home, and after I told him nothing happened, he says,  _ ‘I must’ve guessed wrong!’ _ and he gets out a can of green spray paint, and I have to tell him that I’m not going to do that again,” Keith said. “Basically, nothing is more boring than watching paint dry.”

Lance was silent for a minute. “Man, that was, uh… A little heavier than I expected.”

He shrugged. “I ‘dunno. I kinda thought it was funny, when you look back at it.”

“You have a weird sense of humor, Keith.”

“I get that sometimes.”

“I guess I gotta tell a story about paint, too, now, right?”

“About whatever passes the time.”

Lance leaned forward, hands on his knees. “M’hmm. Okay. Got it. So, my little sister really wanted to paint her room lavender. She was eight at the time, and my mom said that she could do it so long as she raised enough money for the paint and the supplies and stuff. She did whatever she could. She set up a bake sale in the front yard, which was eventually shut down by my mom in account of the fact that she was alone and her ‘cookies’ were just bread with chocolate chips pushed inside. She had a yard sale, also shut down by my mom, because she was, once again, alone, and she was trying to sell my parent’s engagement rings. Eventually, mom went out and bought, like, ten packs of scented pencils that were on sale for a buck per pack, which left her with somewhere around 200 pencils. Originally, they were for all of us to share, but every kid at school wanted scented pencils. She didn't really care for them all that much. Some kids were asking for some, and she got the idea to resell pencils for a dollar each. She had, like, a business going and everything. Mom even had to get her two new things of pencils at one point, and her excuse was that she wanted some for home and she kept losing them. There was a secret operation going on right under her nose. She only got busted after a kid tattled on her because he saw the same pencils going for way cheaper, and she was sent to the principal, but she was able to play it off like she had only just started selling pencils and had only given away a few. She ended up with $250 and enough money to paint her room lavender.”

Keith stared back in awe. “Woah.”

“Yeah.”

“And your mom never questioned how she got $250?”

“She just assumed it was a huge accumulation of chore money, stuff earned from the neighbors, and birthday cash. She figured some was from the pencil-selling business, but she was still operating under the assumption that she was caught before it really took off and that she served her time by getting grounded from TV for two weeks.” 

“... That’s impressive.”

“I know, right? Here, we can make this a game— now you gotta tell me a story about your sibling.”

“I don't have any,” Keith said.

“Oh. About selling stuff, then?”

“Never happened.”

“About getting in trouble at school?” Lance prompted.

He grimaced in something resembling shame. “I… kind of stabbed a kid with a pencil so hard that I got suspended?”

His eyes widened. “Tell me.”

“There was this kid in elementary school that was really pissing me off. He would try to push me into the toilet, he would steal stuff out of other people’s cubbies, put it in mine, and try to get me in trouble, he would talk about how my dad was crazy and my mom never wanted me… That kind of shit that’s way too cruel for a fourth grader. Anyways, I decided that I had enough, and I was going to sharpen a pencil as much as I could and scratch him with it, just to show him I wasn't as peaceful as he thought I was. I went up to his desk, and he said something about my dad being as messed up as I am, I stabbed  _ way _ harder than I meant to. Like, the graphite ended up getting lodged in his palm and healing over like that. I almost got expelled.”

“...  _ Damn, _ Keith. Do you have any stories with happy endings?”

“Somewhere, probably. Now you have to tell a story about… stabbing?”   


Lance leaned back against the wall of the elevator. “Maybe it’s time that we quit while we’re ahead. Let me think up of something else really quick.”

Keith muttered something in agreement and returned his gaze to the doors that had previously promised their quick exit.

He wasn’t too bad looking, really. Lance may not have particularly  _ liked _ him— he was such a show-off, always top in Iverson’s class, a teacher’s pet, and he never even acknowledged it himself, which somehow made it worse— but he couldn’t truthfully say that he was… unattractive. The mullet kind of set him off (seriously, no one had a mullet nowadays unless they had no taste, no hairdresser, or needed to get rid of their current stylist), but the rest of him wasn’t terrible. In fact, he could probably learn to like that stupid haircut of his. Keith seemed like the kind of person that would never wash his hair  _ ever, _ but it looked soft and fluffy. Lance kind of wanted to reach out and touch it. His eyes, not to mention, were really nice, too. They were some sort of dark color he couldn’t place. Gray? Brown? Blue? Maybe all three? He couldn’t tell. His skin was—

“MASH?”   


The sudden interruption broke him out of his thoughts. “What?”

“We could play MASH,” Keith proposed again. “I have a pencil and paper in my bag.”

“Oh,” Lance said, “I haven’t played that game in, like, years.”

“We don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

“I wasn’t declining,” he said, scooting closer to Keith so as to see the paper he was digging out of his bag. “Just stating facts.”   


He shrugged his shoulders, producing a pencil from his back pocket. “First up: Three kinds of cars.”   


“Uh, I ‘dunno. Can I do ships instead? That’d be a much more entertaining way to get around.” Lance stated.   


“No.”   


“You’re no fun.”

“Fine. Instead, we’ll do, uh… three… colors?”   


“Oh, easy! Blue, red, and an imaginary color beyond the visible spectrum.”

“... Okay. Three jobs.”   


"Mm… Pilot, scientist, serial killer.”

“Is ‘serial killer’ a job?”   


“Anything’s a job if you try hard enough.”   


“Right. Three places to live.”   


“Garrison, the beach, the Andromeda Galaxy.”

“Three pets.”   


“Fish, dog, man o’ war.”   


“Amount of kids you’ll have.”   


“Zero, three, twenty-one. I want to beat out those Twenty Kids and Counting people and get my own, better show.”

“Why are your last choices always something that, in reality, would be terrible to have?”   


“You gotta live life on the edge, Keith. Maybe my twenty-one kids and I like living in the Andromeda Galaxy with a man o’ war. Serial killing puts food on the table, y’know. Especially if we’re cannibalists. Wait, can we change one of my professions to ‘cannibalist’?”   


“No. Three people you’d marry.”   


He thought for a moment. He didn’t really have any current crushes, and even if he did, he wouldn’t disclose them to  _ Keith, _ of all people.    


“Uh…” Lance mumbled. “Hunk, because we made a promise that if neither of us are married by forty and we’re still best friends, we’ll marry each other. Financial benefits and shit.”   


“Smart,” he muttered as he scribbled it down.

“Um… I dated this kid named Naomi in kindergarten, and we got married on the playground, so… Can’t leave out my real wife, wherever she is.”   


“Of course,” he said, writing another name.

He stared at Keith for a moment. He  _ was  _ Iverson’s favorite, which was annoying, and always at the top of the class, keeping Lance from earning his valedictorian title (that, really, he wasn’t even close to getting, but that wasn’t the point). Soft hair, pretty eyes, a really nice voice, that, honestly, he could listen to for a long while without ever getting tired of it… Maybe he’d marry him if he was the last person on Earth, and they were on a deserted island without any hope of survival.

A broken elevator was kind of like a deserted island, right?

“And, uh… you, I guess.”   


Keith jumped a little, glancing up from the paper. “Me?”

“Well, yeah. You can find solace in the fact that if we die in this elevator, at least you had the privilege of marrying me in the MASH universe.”   


“The universe in which we would also possibly have twenty-one kids and you would be a serial killer who serves us corpses for supper? Okay,” he half-snickered. Lance thought he could see him trying to hide the redness in his face. Probably the result of the temperature in the elevator. It  _ was _ getting kind of hot, and it absolutely did not have to do with the fact that he could feel a blush rising in his own cheeks.    


“Uh— okay— alright, that’s— uh, fine, I guess.” He quickly scrawled his own name onto the sheet of paper, then cleared his throat and began to draw a spiral. “Tell me when to stop.”   


He waited until the spiral had reached what he assumed was a good stopping point, and said, “Stop.”   


Keith counted off the lines and followed the pattern to cross off some of the category options. He scanned over them, and started telling a story.

“Okay, so,” Keith began, “you live in a beach shack with a man o’war and twenty-one kids. Your, uh… I don’t know, your tongue turned an imaginary color beyond the visible spectrum because of some incident at your job as a scientist.”

“Not terrible.”

“You live in a shack with twenty-one children of indeterminable age and a man o’ war.”   


“Yeah, but I have a tongue that’s a color no one can even see. That makes it all worth it.”   


“I’d consider that more of a con than a pro.”   


“That’s your opinion. It’s wrong, but it’s your opinion. Who did I marry, anyway?”   


Keith coughed, his cheeks going rosy once again. “Um… me.”   


There was a beat of silence. Lance felt his own face turning red, trying his best to force it down. After another moment of quiet he cleared his throat and said, “I want a redraw.”   


Keith blinked, processing his words, before their meaning dawned on him.  _ “Hey!” _

“Are you kidding me? You would never be a good father to our twenty-one children. If I’m going to make a show better than Twenty Kids and Counting— which, honestly, isn’t that hard to do— I’m going to need a superior spouse. A spouse to beat all other spouses. An absolutely amazing person, practically flawless. Someone like…  Fran from The Nanny.”   


“You didn’t even put Fran on the list!”

“I should have. I realize that now. She’s the best person I’ve ever met, and I don’t even personally know her. It’d be an honor to marry her.”

Keith rolled his eyes, stuffing the paper back in his bag, along with his pencil.

“What?” Lance asked. “You don’t want your fortune told through the awe-inspiring magic of MASH?”

“Far from a fortune-telling,” he responded, leaning back against the wall, arms crossed. “Besides, I think I’m all MASHed out. I was forced to wed you and take care of your twenty-one children and man o’ war.”   


He narrowed his eyes. “I mean, no one said you were forced,” he mumbled.

“It’s implied,” he said.   


“Fine,” he sighed. “We’ll think of something else to do.”   


Really, if he and Keith were the last two people on Earth, he wasn’t sure he would mind marrying him. With all other options being exhausted, of course. Like, if it was still law that he could not marry a pinecone or a swivel chair. He really did have nice hair that Lance could cut into a better style, with better being any style at all (seriously, who did that boy’s hair?). He wondered if he had a routine. His eyes were so pretty— he was still trying to figure out what color they were. Indigo? Violet? Did he wear colored contacts?

Not only was his appearance decent, but he had a personality that wasn’t  _ completely _ terrible. He could be sweet, when he wasn’t acting so aloof. Sometimes he wondered if that whole “mysterious tough guy” thing he put on was just a facade. Maybe it wasn’t. He couldn’t tell. He wished he could. 

Keith was sort of oblivious, too. He could never really tell when something was a joke, or when someone was planning something. He could definitely determine when someone was trying to insult him, though, because when that did happen, he never held back.    
He was, admittedly, kind of… humble. He didn’t brag about being top in the class. He didn’t flaunt the fact that he was Iverson’s favorite, or how he was guaranteed to be chosen as a pilot when the next year rolled around. Still, he was the only thing standing in Lance’s way of being a pilot (or, more appropriately, one of the thirty-nine other wannabe pilots that would end up being the lucky few to stay training at the Garrison, but trying to predict who each and every one of them could be and staying angry at each of them was too strenuous of a task). Lance tried his best— he studied, he practiced, he sucked up to teachers, but it didn’t matter in the end. The only way he would be chosen to stay at the Garrison next year was if someone in the running dropped out, and that was nearly impossible. 

Keith was the only one he could blame. So he blamed him. Lance would be damned if he wasn’t chosen purely because he, the unlucky #41, couldn’t make it into the top forty potential pilots. 

“You think of anything yet?” Keith asked.   


Lance gave a small, startled jump, losing his train of thought.  _ Shit. _ “Um, yeah,” he lied. “We can play… twenty questions.”   


“M’mkay,” he said. “You go first.”

“No,” he argued. “I’ve been the absolute best at these games so far. You’ve gotta at least try on twenty questions.”   


Keith groaned, exasperated. “Fine. Inanimate, green, warm.”   


Lance blinked. “Uh, what?”   


He furrowed his brow. “You know. I think of an object, I give you a few hints, then you get to ask twenty yes-or-no questions about it and guess what it is…”   


He coughed, embarrassment rising in his face. “I’m gonna be honest with you here. I’ve never… quite… learned how to properly play twenty questions.”   


Keith shot him a disbelieving glare.

“We were more ‘hangman’ kind of people back at my elementary school,” Lance continued.

“What did you think it was?” he asked.

“I just thought it was, like… a get-to-know-you sort of game. Where you get to ask twenty questions about the other person and they have to answer no matter what.”

Keith took a deep breath, deepened his seemingly ever-present scowl, and said, “Alright. We’ll do it your way.”   
He was more surprised than anything. He was expecting a grimace accompanied by a refusal, as well as possible further griping. Keith Kogane wasn’t the type of person to disclose information to a stranger, and even if Lance  _ was _ a stranger, he at least knew that. 

Whatever. He was giving permission to ask whatever he wanted, and he was going to do just that. 

“What’s your favorite color?”

He looked confused for a moment, like he was anticipating something worse, and then replied, “Red.”   


“M’mkay. Favorite food?”   


“I ‘dunno. Popcorn?”   


“Great. Favorite… book?”   


“Bridge to Terabithia.”   


“You depressing bastard. Favorite class?”   


“Uh… piloting.”   


“Hmm. Do you wanna be a pilot, Keith?”   


“Yeah, I guess.”   


“Okay. Do you think you’ll get into a piloting spot?”   


“I hope so.”   


“Why wouldn’t you? You’re Iverson’s favorite.”   


“I— Wait, what?”   


“Did you not know that? You’re top in the class, you get good grades, and you’re the best at the simulator. The only thing he yells at you for is doing dangerous shit, but even then, it’s a lot more toned down. If any of the rest of us did some of the stuff you do, he’d be hoarse from constantly screaming at us.”

“That’s… That’s not true.”   


“Come on, Keith. You know it is.”

“No, I don’t. I’m not Iverson’s favorite. I’m not anyone’s favorite. Plus, that ‘dangerous shit’ I do is just a quicker means of getting to where I need to go, and it works.  You should try it more often."   


“That's the thing! When I do it, I get a twenty minute lecture on how I could have killed my entire crew, but when you do it, it's always,  _ ‘Great job, Keith. Just be more cautious next time.’ _ ”

“That's probably because you always fail the fuckin’ simulator!”

“Oh, you pay attention to other people’s simulator results? I’m surprised! Your head is so far up Iverson’s ass, I thought you couldn't see.”

“At least I can actually pilot a ship. And not by being overconfident and getting angry at someone else for their failure, either.”

“Yeah? Well— at least I try!”

“Like I don't? Jesus, do you think in black and white? Ability doesn't mean ease.”

“You don't even seem like you care! You just breeze through and don't seem to mind if you almost smash a wing or scratch up the ship.”

“Maybe I  _ don’t _ care. Maybe there are more pressing matters than whether or not I mess up a simulator or become a pilot.”

“Well— What?”

Keith glowered, took a deep breath, and cast his gaze aside. “It doesn't matter.”

“You can't just bring something up and then say it doesn't matter. I’m curious now.”

“I think the word you're looking for is ‘nosy.’”

“Tell me.”

“I shouldn't’ve said anything. Just leave it be.”

“What part of  _ ‘tell me’ _ did you not understand?”

He huffed, blowing a strand of hair away from his face. It fell right back in place, but he didn't seem to mind. “Fine,” he grunted. “My dad’s gotten… really sick. He’s kind of lost his mind, I think, and he won’t get any help. He’s putting all his energy into finding my mom. More than before. He’s doing a ton of experiments, making up conspiracies, attempting dangerous stuff to figure out what the ‘energy’ is in the mountains. I’m afraid he’s gonna try doing something… deadly.”

Lance chewed at his lip. Man, did he feel like a jackass. “Sorry.”

Keith was glaring at nothing in particular, but it felt directed towards him. “S’okay. Not your fault.”

“I shouldn't have forced you—”

“I  _ said _ it’s okay.”

They sat in silence for a few moments, Lance in guilt and Keith in lament. Or was he just sulking? Scorning? Moping? All four? What did he do in his spare time, anyway? Glower at his textbook?

God, Lance was a bad person. First he forces someone to cough up personal information and then he silently ridicules him.

Maybe, to ease the tension and uncomfortable air, he could reveal something about himself. But what? What would have been the equivalent to telling a near stranger of their fear of their father accidentally offing himself, especially for secretive, distant Keith?

He let out a slow sigh.  _ Fuck. _

“You know,” he began, “I… didn’t mean to… burst like that. I just… you’re really good at this whole… piloting thing. Iverson likes you. You get good grades. You never fail the simulator. I wish I could do that. I mean, I’ve wanted to be a ship pilot ever since I was little, but seeing you, and how carelessly you— and everyone else— just fly through everything, I wonder if this is really what I’m meant to do. I guess I kind of made you my… personal rival, if that makes any sense.”

Keith’s serious expression seemed to falter. He slowly turned his head to face him.

His eyes darted towards the ground. His hair was in his face again, clearly obstructing his vision, but he didn’t seem to care. “If that’s what helps you,” he mumbled, “then let’s be rivals.”

Lance blinked a couple times, trying to process his words. “Really?”   


He spared a glance towards him, then quickly returned his gaze to the elevator floor. “Yeah.”

“I mean— okay,” he said, feeling a smile bloom on his face. “Let’s be rivals.”

The elevator carriage rattled again, dropping slightly. For a moment, Lance thought they were falling, and, consequently, going to die painfully. Instead, the doors pushed open, and they were met with the face of a technician and a crowd of curious passerbys. 

“You guys okay?” the technician asked.

“M’hmm,” Lance hummed. “Thanks.”

The technician hummed in return, then began to gather up their equipment.

Keith sprung to his feet, slung his backpack over his shoulder, and stepped out of the elevator.

“Gotta go,” he said, turning to Lance, who was still fumbling with his bag. “Really late for something important. But, uh, it was nice talking to you, uh… you.”   


He started off. Lance was about to remind him of his name, but he was gone, and they probably wouldn’t willingly interact with one another for a while. 

He gathered his things, stood, and made his way to his next class.

* * *

“Why did you think we were rivals, anyway?” asked Keith, leaning against the cold metal of the ship wall.

“Uh,” Lance said, raiding the kitchen for a midnight snack that wasn’t food goo, “because you told me we could be?”   


“What? No, I didn’t.”

“Yes, you did.”

“Nope.”   


“Uh huh.”

“When?”   


“The  _ elevator? _ Don’t tell me you don’t remember the elevator.”

“I’ve been in a lot of elevators, Lance.”

“The Garrison? Third floor elevator? First year there?” he reminded him, reaching into a cupboard and pulling out some pre-packaged alien cuisine. “We got stuck and I said something about me thinking we were rivals and you were like, ‘okay, that’s cool, we’re rivals now’?”

Keith’s tired eyes widened. “That was you? You’re Asshole Elevator Guy?”   


_ “Asshole?” _ he asked, swiveling around on his heel. “You were the one was being, like, super distant the whole time. All your answers were either a grunt or a disinterested ‘sure.’”   


“You tried to make the elevator take off without me!”   


“Well, yeah, because I didn’t like you.”   


_ “That’s called being an asshole!” _

“If you hadn’t gotten on the elevator, you wouldn’t have been stuck there, so, really, I was doing you a favor.”   


He furrowed his brow and pressed his back further into the wall. “I didn’t say I absolutely hated being there,” he mumbled.

Lance’s face remained static for a moment, until he had processed his words, and his mouth slowly upturned into a smile. “Aww!” he teased, strolling closer to him. “Did my angsty, apathetic boyfriend admit to liking being stuck in an elevator car with me?”   


“I didn’t say I liked it!” he said, trying to backtrack, his face growing redder by the minute. “I just said I didn’t hate it.”   


“Aw. You liked spending time with me, even if I was being an asshole.”   


“So you admit it! You  _ did _ act like an asshole.”   


“It was a mutual thing. We were both assholes.”   


“Shut up, Lance. I didn’t even know it was you.”   


“Yeah, but now you do, which means you just told me you liked being with me.”   


As Lance’s arm snaked its way around his shoulder, Keith muttered, “I do like spending time with you, y’know.”   


“Aw, Keith, you’re melting my heart.”

_ “Anyways,” _ he said, desiring a change in subject as he stretched an arm around Lance’s waist. “You got your food. It’s bedtime.”

“As Voltron, we are a force of justice for the entire galaxy. Justice never sleeps, Keith.”

“Justice sleeps until it has to wake up because justice is  _ tired,” _ he insisted. “Let’s go.”   


Lance’s sigh, followed by a compliance to begin walking, was considered a silent agreement between the two of them. 

As they made their way down the hall, he decided that, although it was an inconvenience at the time, and although Keith didn’t recognize him as the apparent Asshole Elevator Guy, he was glad that the third floor elevator broke down that day with the two of them inside.

He regarded it as a nice first interaction with his current boyfriend.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey!  
> This is my first Voltron fic, and I'm pretty new to everything, so I'm sorry if some of this stuff contradicts canon. Especially about the Garrison's school system. I sort of made up a system for picking and choosing who trains for what halfway through, so to explain: The Garrison accepts a bunch students for a first year. After that, they choose 40 students for each category that they show the most potential for. And, since there's three(?) categories (piloting, engineering, communications) that makes only 120 students that are let back into the Garrison the year afterwards.  
> Sorry, that was probably confusing. I just needed an explanation for the "the only reason why you're here is because the best pilot in your class flunked out" line.  
> Anyways, thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed it!  
> Edit: I have the first episode playing in the background and Lance just explained that the reason for that line was because he only became a fighter pilot instead of a cargo pilot was due to Keith flunking. I just published this.  
> I hate everything. I have no idea why I didn't catch that the first three times I watched it.


End file.
